“Practice! And you take advantage of each bear’s talent. “People ask, ‘How do you do that?’ adds Murray the elder. “People ask, ‘When is it that you’re training the bears?’ The answer is all the time. “When you work with bears, it’s every day, every day, constant, constant, constant,” she says.
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Maureen cares for bears of all ages, and the training is nonstop. “A bear cub has little rounded ears, small dark eyes, needle-sharp teeth and claws, and the shortest temper on record,” adds Murray A. The cubs ambled around the house and occasionally went for rides in the car. “Down come the curtains, off comes the tablecloth, over goes the milk pitcher …” “You haven’t lived until you’ve raised bear cubs in your kitchen,” Murray the elder often says.
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Brother bear and sister bear show full#
Since the cubs are raised in the Clarks’ homes, their family albums are full of such images. Maureen toddled around with her baby bottle alongside the cubs as they drank from their bottles, which made for good snapshots. have worked with the bears in one way or another since they were children. He watches every show and still works around the Post, meeting the public and setting up props.īoth Maureen and Murray A. He’s 82 now–you can still see the bear man in him–and he sits beside the ring, quietly watching Maureen, 50, and Murray A., 40, do things that he taught them and some that he didn’t. Murray stopped performing in 2003, but he has never retired. In 1949, when Murray was 22, he and his older brother began performing with two of the family’s female bears, Ebony and Midnight. This old-timey place has a history firmly rooted in New Hampshire’s soil. Today, this roadside attraction has evolved into an entertainment resort that features not only trained-bear shows but a facsimile 19th-century village, an authentic wood-fired steam train that takes visitors chugging through the countryside, a museum of the family’s own treasures, even a Segway ride. They finish one another’s sentences, which run together as smoothly as the waters of the Pemigewasset River that tumbles behind their legendary Trading Post. Talking with these three is like talking to one person. One day last fall, after Clark’s Trading Post had closed for the season and the three bears were preparing for hibernation, the family stopped to tell us about their years here. But in recent years, only the elder Murray, his daughter Maureen, and his son Murray A. Clark, and their two sons, Ed and Murray, but their offshoots as well: in all, a family the size of a small town, each of whom has shared in the growth of this family empire. And, further, it should be said that when you say “the Clarks,” you’re talking about not only the direct descendants of the founders, Edward P. The Clarks, it could be said, are perhaps the most ingenious entrepreneurs ever to stake a claim in the White Mountains, substantially influencing the growth of the tourist industry in that region. Clark, the third generation to raise bears here and the second to train and perform with them.įounded in 1928, Ed Clark’s Eskimo Sled Dog Ranch gradually morphed from souvenirs and canines to bear acts. The blonde woman and the red-headed man are brother and sister, Maureen and Murray A. One of thousands of acts that have taken place over the past 60 years in this roadside ring in Lincoln, New Hampshire, is underway at Clark’s Trading Post, a place where generations of bears have worked alongside generations of Clarks.
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Outside the ring, Victoria paces in her pen, rattling the gate. With them is a pixie-like blonde woman and a big, gruff, red-headed man wearing an Australian bush hat. Pemi’s mate, Echo, a 340-pound female, has just finished her act, riding around the ring on a Segway, raising the flag, and dancing. In the ring at Clark’s Trading Post, a six-foot seven-inch, 440-pound black bear named Pemi stands up like a man and tosses a basketball through a hoop.